The Justice Project South Africa (JPSA) is demanding the resignation or dismissal of Sanral spokesperson, Vusi Mona, after telling a concerned Gauteng road user to “raise your IQ a little bit” in response to questions about SMS authenticity.

Speaking on Radio 702 and Cape Talk on Wednesday 15 January 2014, Mona responded to a listener who asked: “How do I as a road user know that I’m not being scammed because there’s a lot of people who will jump on the bandwagon and try to scam you?”.

“How do you guarantee that these SMSes are genuine and not scams?” the listener asked, referring to Sanral’s SMSes demanding e-toll payments.

“As a public servant and an employee of a State Owned Enterprise, Mona has a duty to demonstrate respect for members of the public and he should know better than to openly and blatantly insult a member of the public who was simply asking a legitimate question of him,” said Dembovsky.

“At no time during the course of his interview with [702/Cape Talk’s] Gushwell Brooks did Mona apologise for his utterance. Instead, he tried to justify it by saying that people should “exercise common sense”.

Dembovsky said that the group has been reliably informed that this is not the first time that Mona has alluded to “low IQs” when speaking to journalists about the “e-tolls debate”.

“However this is the first time that we have heard him state as much on public radio, first hand,” the JPSA said.

“Justice Project South Africa hereby calls upon Vusi Mona to do the honourable thing and resign immediately, failing which for the Minister of Transport to dismiss him since he clearly has no respect for the public he is supposed to serve – not hurl insults at.”